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OIO—The Game
Developer and Publisher: Uncanny Games (Valenciennes, France)
If you seek a serene, relaxed and offbeat two-dimensional platformer, then look no further than OIO. This game emphasizes exploration and puzzle-solving rather than combat. Instead of having a story specified at the beginning, you discover the plot—involving finding out what happened to the area’s other inhabitants—as you proceed. You control a wooden character (whose head is shaped like the word “oio”), and you collect pickups and modify the environment in various imaginative ways to proceed. You’re able to do amazing things with wooden beams while climbing, jumping, triggering switches and overcoming obstacles. Puzzles are set at just the right level of difficulty, and there are special achievements that motivate you to do your best. The beautiful, sumptuous widescreen environment is full of odd formations and contraptions that can facilitate or impede your progress. You control the action with a gamepad or the mouse and keyboard.
Scoregasm
Developer and Publisher: Charlie’s Games (Diss, United Kingdom)
If you like abstract arcade space shooters such as Geometry Wars, then you’ll love Scoregasm. Although there have been tons of games of this type through the years, this one—despite its strange name—refines the best play elements. The Earth is under attack, and you alone can save the planet from destruction. Scorgasm’s special branching path system allows you to select a level of challenge for each successive scenario. Its psychedelic widescreen geometric graphics, booming sound effects (including a great synthesized announcer), and pulse-pounding soundtrack are absolutely mesmerizing. Your ability to create a mega-explosion and destroy all nearby foes is a real blast. When you encounter a boss, you have a big fight on your hands, so your hand-eye coordination had better be in gear. The game is DRM-free and supports gamepad (with enhanced support for the Xbox 360 controller) and mouse-keyboard input.
Midnight Mansion HD
Developer and Publisher: ActionSoft (Burbank, Cal., USA)
Retro remakes are rarely noteworthy enough to merit inclusion in an awards article, but this adventure-platform release is a real exception. Playing the role of the intrepid Jack Malone, you search for treasure in 11 scary mansions filled with obstacles and opportunities. While hunting for loot, there are lots of pickups—including keys, shields, lanterns, backpacks and maps—to be discovered. Clever use of switches, ladders and slide poles is essential for success. The gameplay is family-friendly—you can choose to have no blood appear—and is less about killing foes than avoiding them. The ominous music, cute visuals (especially the great monsters), and fun/creepy sound effects really enhance the gameplay. You can play using intuitive gamepad or keyboard controls with a widescreen view of the action, and after you’ve finished the game you can even explore custom mansions created by other players.
Agency of Anomalies: Mystic Hospital Collector’s Edition
Developer: Orneon (Vinnitsa, Ukraine)
Publisher: Big Fish Games (Seattle, Wash., USA)
Ever dream of being trapped in a lunatic asylum? Then this hidden-object puzzle adventure is for you. You play the role of a special paranormal agent who investigates a military hospital where efforts to create super-soldiers have gone terribly wrong. Horrendous experiments on humans have transformed soldiers, doctors and nurses into grotesque monstrosities. Your goal is to save the world from a dimensional vortex triggered by this experimental activity. Among the many outstanding features of this game is its truly unnerving atmosphere, conveyed through disturbing visuals and wonderful background harpsichord music. You control everything with the mouse, and can earn special achievements as you proceed. The Collector’s Edition adds a comprehensive strategy guide, fun mini-games (which you can replay after you finish), and a quite lengthy bonus adventure in a new setting.
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Neat article! I love these kinds of informative little tour guides..I’d never heard of a single one of these games. Its ironic that the most powerful gaming platform sees very few releases which take full advantage of its superior hardware – including mouse and keyboard – but without requiring you to be online. The few we’re still getting seem to be mostly casual titles like ones in this piece. My hope is that over time we’ll start to see the cream of these smaller developers producing more serious and elaborate projects while staying hungry enough to keep the quality and innovation levels above average. Regardless, I can’t foresee a future where hard-core FPSs and strategy games are only made for consoles, so the ever-impending death of PC gaming should continue to remain exaggerated.
I played the demo of Bastion on Xbox Live and now I have it on OnLive. I’ve played the first half hour or so and it’s charming, but with a little touch of dread. The combination of the catchy background music and the clever narration makes it a unique and fun game. You should definitely at least check out the demo.
Also, the developer of Xotic just gave away 1000 copies of it on their website the other day. They apparently had many more players interested than they had copies to give out, so that might be worth a look too. Can’t say any of the others in the article rang a bell for me, but they’re worth a look based on what Bob had to say about them.
Nice job again this year, Bob. Glad to see these kinds of games get a few minutes in the sun.
I think the casual game market continues to be successful because of the Independent Game Developer. The major platform developers have budgets that rival major motion picture producers, but they all seem to be locked on the same concepts needing to create bigger special effects that are more visual and spectacular.
The Casual Game Developer can concentrate on story, plot and puzzles, and provide the player a good time in a smaller window of time; I know because I am one. We have smaller budgets, but even in the hard economic times we have to look for creative ways to generate funding to get our projects done. Since we do not have a big return on our projects we are not pursued by the big money entrepreneurs.
Nonetheless, I expect casual games to continue to be successful in this market.
Thanks to all of you for your thoughtful comments on my annual awards feature! It makes all the incredible work of testing all the games worth it.
The death of PC gaming, both for hardcore AAA titles and for small indie titles, has been grossly exaggerated by those who have become enamored with console and mobile platforms. I found that this year there were far more worthy contenders for my awards than ever before, yet I keep reading uninformed reports in reputable print and online sources that the only casual PC games being released these days are hidden-object games.
The biggest joy for me in doing this series year after year is to be able to show our readers that there is a treasure trove of really high-quality but-not-so-visible offerings out there, involving high production values, great gameplay, and considerable innovation. They provide a very welcome respite from the “me-too” releases we see today from the well-publicized AAA titles….
Bob
thanks! this is one list that i look forward to every year from avault.
Another fantastic value-filled entry from Bob Mandel. We need to hear more often from you, Bob. Full fledged reviews of some of these games would be more interesting than yet another SoE awarded review for the latest Call of Duty.
Good games, but some of these aren’t very casual…..
Hi Bob
I’m Federico, one of the creators of The Balbarian.
I sent you two emails with the promo code but I think you didn’t receive them. So I decided to post a comment to tell you that.
Did you check the spam folder? I already had the same problem with other people.
I hope to find a way to send you the promo code!
And great article, it’s good to know that there are people like you supporting the indie developers. Thank you!
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